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Under Mr. Heavey, who remains chief executive, the London-based company has grown into an exploration juggernaut with operations in more than 20 countries, a stock market valuation of about $22 billion and an exploration force of some 200 geologists and geophysicists. Tullow plans to spend $1 billion this year on exploration and appraisal, nearly as much as its 2011 operating profit of $1.1 billion.
Despite Mr. Heavey’s early inexperience, his company has proved better than most of its larger rivals at making big discoveries. “It wasn’t me being a good geologist,” Mr. Heavey, 59, said in a telephone interview. “I did what I was good at and picked the best people.”
The company’s output is growing fast, but remains small at 78,200 barrels a day of oil and oil equivalents for 2011.
Analysts place Tullow in the vanguard of a cutting-edge group of oil companies that also includes the American companies Anadarko Petroleum and Kosmos Energy.
“The thing that is incredible about Tullow over any of the other companies is their consistent track record of going into frontier basins, where no one else has found anything, and turning that into hundreds of millions of barrels,” said Rob West, an analyst at Bernstein Research in London. “They are an absolutely top performer.”
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